A Face Only the Mother of a Thousand Young Could Love!

The eldritch, the strange, and the weird are often relegated to the domains of villains and NPCs in fantasy, with the good guys being the ones who stand in the way of the dark things that remain just beyond our perception, which we can never truly understand. But sometimes, it can be fun to take on the mantle of the otherworldly, and to embrace the alien terrors of the cosmos. Each installment of Weekly Wonders: Eldritch Archetypes contains five archetypes for eldritch characters—those that are weird, alien, and otherworldly, who don’t fit in with normal society—as well as a cleric domain devoted to a specific mythos entity or race.

For this book, we focus on the Great Old One Shub-Niggurath, also known as The Black Goat of the Woods, and the Black Goat with a Thousand Young. Whether or not they reference this mythos deity directly, each archetype builds on themes closely associated with it, including physical mutations, fertility, and spawning horrible monstrosities. The Shub-Niggurath bloodrager bloodline grants tentacles and sucking maws while bloodraging, and ultimately allows you to infest foes with Shub-Niggurath’s hateful seed. The order of the black goat is a cavalier order devoted to Shub-Niggurath, whose mounts become twisted and warped by the eldritch entity’s power, and who share a mind with these corrupted steeds. The gof’nn hupadgh are druids dedicated to the service of Shub-Niggurath, who can conjure her unnatural young to their sides, and even create dark young. The channeler of Shub-Niggurath is a kineticist archetype that draws on the strange, life-giving essence of Shub-Niggurath to empower their channeling, and the warstitcher of Shub-Niggurath is a warpriest archetype for those blessed by the black goat, which can cause protective pustules to grow with her fervor, and can conjure twisted aberrations to aid her. Finally, the Shub-Niggurath cleric domain focuses on using one’s own flesh to conjure hideous and tentacled monstrosities.

Whether you're about to embark on a campaign of eldritch horror (such as the official Paizo adventure path dealing with strange and alien entities), or you just want an excuse to play a servant of the unknowable and uncaring cosmic entities of the Cthulhu mythos, this book has lots of tantalizing options to offer. Even GMs can get in on the fun, as several of the archetypes here are perfect for insane cultist NPCs as well, and can make for exciting and memorable encounters.